Archive for the ‘Wall Street’ Category

Today I will run the risk of re-posting somebody else’s work many months after others have had a chance to read it, on the assumption that non-professional readers do not spend their day scouring investment blogs for clever reading material. The much greater risk, I think, is that thoughtful work goes unread by people who [&hellip

I recently pointed out the absurdity of certain executive pay packages which result from stock or stock option awards. Rather than matching “pay to performance” as proponents claim, the equity awards to executives often create absurd payouts for bad performance, or substitute lucky timing for skill. If the stock goes up during an executive’s tenure, or even [&hellip

Every once in a while – ok, every couple of weeks – we get hit in the head with a new example of how “executive compensation” and “executive performance” have close to zero correlation in practice. The key to this disconnect is typically “incentive pay” through company stock or stock options. This week’s story about Yahoo’s [&hellip

Editor’s Note: Author and recovering hedge funder Lars Kroijer provided this guest-post, making the case that most of us would be better off acknowledging we do not have an edge over markets. Most of us can’t consistently “beat the market,” but many of us pay a lot in fees to try. Please also see related [&hellip

I did an interview recently for RT London, which I gather is sort of Putin’s version of a Russian CNN or Qatar’s Al Jazeera. Just more sensational. They wanted to cover what they call a recent string of high-profile banker suicides. I have zero reason to think bankers commit suicide in higher numbers than any [&hellip

I founded Bankers Anonymous because, as a recovering banker, I believe that the gap between the financial world as I know it and the public discourse about finance is more than just a problem for a family trying to balance their checkbook, or politicians trying to score points over next year’s budget – it is a weakness of our civil society. For reals. It’s also really fun for me.